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Tim Searchinger

Bio

Timothy D. Searchinger is a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute and serves as the technical director of the next World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future. He is also a Research Scholar and Lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. Although trained as a lawyer, his work today combines ecology and economics to analyze the challenge of how to feed a growing world population while reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Searchinger was the lead author of papers in Science in 2008 and 2009 offering the first calculations of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with land use change due to biofuels, and describing a broader error for bioenergy in the accounting rules for the Kyoto Protocol and many national laws. Searchinger is also the director of the Agricultural Synergies Project, a collaborative, international project to develop guidance for developing countries on means of boosting agriculture production while reducing emissions.

For most of his career, Searchinger worked as an attorney at the conservation group, the Environmental Defense Fund, where he directed its work on agricultural policy and wetlands and several major aquatic ecosystems, and received a National Wetlands Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Searchinger has also been a fellow of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford University, a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund, a Senior Fellow of the Law and Environmental Policy Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, a special adviser to the Maryland government on the Chesapeake Bay, a Deputy General Counsel to Governor Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania and a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He is a graduate, summa cum laude, of Amherst College and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. His website can be found at www.princeton.edu/~tsearchi.

Blog Posts

WRI released Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future in April 2016, finding that for people who consume high amounts of meat and dairy, shifting to diets with a greater share of plant-based foods could significantly reduce agriculture’s pressure on the environment. Below, we respond to some queries about the methods and findings.

In an article originally published for Devex, Tim Searchinger and Craig Hanson discuss a new World Resources Report publication, which finds that using the modern advances of genetics—such as DNA mapping—offers a great opportunity to increase crop yields while also protecting the environment.

The world is on a path to need almost 70 percent more crops in 2050 than those it produced in 2006. To close that crop gap without large price increases or clearing more valuable forests and savannas, yields are going to have to grow 33 percent more in the next 44 years than they did in the last 44.

The United Nations’ new population growth projections show that the world is set to reach nearly 9.6 billion by 2050. This growth holds serious implications for global food security. Absent other effective measures to control dietary shifts and reduce food loss and waste, the world will need to produce about 70 percent more food annually by 2050 to meet global demands. That is a big task, and even harder to do without converting millions more hectares of forests into farmland, contributing to climate change.

Publications

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Eleven

Installment 11 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that for people who consume high amounts of meat and dairy, shifting to diets with a greater share of plant-based foods could significantly reduce agriculture’s pressure on the environment....

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Ten

Installment 10 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future proposes a definition for lands with low environmental opportunity cost. From there, it offers recommendations for how any new cropland expansion can be directed toward these lands.

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Nine

Installment 9 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that any dedicated use of land for growing bioenergy inherently comes at the cost of not using that land for growing food or animal feed, or for storing carbon.

A menu of solutions to sustainably feed more than 9 billion people by 2050

The world’s agricultural system faces a great balancing act. To meet different human needs, by 2050 it must simultaneously produce far more food for a population expected to reach about 9.6 billion, provide economic opportunities for the hundreds of millions of rural poor who depend on...

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Three

The United Nations projects that world population will rise from just over 7 billion in 2012 to nearly 9.6 billion by 2050. This paper examines the nature of the population challenge globally, the effect of population growth on food demand in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the potential benefits―in...

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Two

About 24 percent of all calories currently produced for human consumption are lost or wasted. This paper examines the implications of this amount of loss and waste, profiles a number of approaches for reducing it, and puts forth five recommendations for how to move forward on this issue. "...

Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment One

How can the world adequately feed more than 9 billion people by 2050 in a manner that advances economic development and reduces pressure on the environment? This is one of the paramount questions the world faces over the next four decades. “The Great Balancing Act” seeks to start answering this...